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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Miller's Game Theory were a plausible-sounding college rock band from the Davis area of San Francisco who found themselves brutally undone by the weight of "the next REM" expectations they were loaded down with.

They nearly broke through to a wider audience with 1987's Lolita Nation, but just as they were poised for success their label went bust and then the band imploded.

Miller moved on to Loud Family, named after the original reality TV family. The band released a series of albums, but struggled from either - depending on which story you believe - an unfashionable connection to college rock, or a intellect too heavy for a general audience.

The band returned from a hiatus in 2006 for one final album, What If It Works?; sadly the question remained moot.

Scott Miller's blog looking at music on a year-by-year basis, Music: What Happened, was turned into a book.

There's a formal statement on the Loud Family website:

I wish it weren't true, but as much as it pains me to write these words, Scott passed away on April 15, 2013. He was a wonderful, loyal friend as well as a brilliant musician, and I will miss him for the rest of my life.

Scott had been planning to start recording a new Game Theory album, Supercalifragile, this summer, and was looking forward to getting back into the studio and reuniting with some of his former collaborators.

If listening to Scott's own music is too painful for you right now, as it is for me, I can tell you that he absolutely loved David Bowie's new album, The Next Day. He found Bowie's late-career resurgence to be hugely inspirational. I'm sure that if there had been a 2013 chapter of Music: What Happened?, one of the songs from that album would have been right at the top.